Lies
by Lividity Jones
Summary: Love does not respect boundaries. It does not respect distance or hardship and it does not respect loss. It endures. *Author's Note* This is a newly-revised version of Lies which takes the events of the Extended Cut into consideration. Please leave a review if you feel so inclined. I might be persuaded to expand this one-shot into a full-length fic.
1. Chapter 1

The waves crashing on the beach were almost soothing, shades of blue and aquamarine blending together to wash as foam against the white, sandy shore. The sun was yellow, bright and shining in the clear sky and seemed to shine without burning. The foliage was thick and flawlessly green, stretching on for uncharted miles and provided ample, comfortable shade over the soft earth. The air was light, dancing merrily around the beach's new guests and blew without picking up the scouring grains of sand and buffeting softly against the hull of the crashed starship.

It was a pretty lie.

Tali's arms wrapped tightly around her chest as she stared out over the beach she could not swim in, the trees she could not touch, and the wind she could not feel. The polished, opaque violet glass of her visor hid her features from the uncharted world and from the other surviving members of the Normandy's crew too busy pretending to be complacent in this false paradise. Her silver eyes, bright as distant stars she could no longer see through the faceless blue sky, narrowed as she watched the small, distant shapes moving up and down the shores. This place was wrong. The sun was too bright, not like the soft orange glow of Tikkun. The sea was too blue, unlike the dark waves stretching out beyond the rocky cliffs of Rannoch. The trees were too large, stretching upwards with leaves too wide and gaudy unlike the desert flowers and brush of the rust-red sands. It was foreign. It was a lie. It was not home.

Stepping down from her rocky vantage point, her suit creaked slightly as she observed the twisted wreckage of the Normandy, the ship she called her home, her arms pulling tighter around her chest in a shudder. The crash had all happened so fast, the ship exiting from FTL and losing control in the sudden shift of gravity. The fact that as many of them survived as they did was a miracle; a miracle they were complacent with. A tremor of anger ran through the quarian's body as she remembered Joker's smile, his nauseating grin at the sight of the beach. Only he could smile after EDI's body collapsed onto the deck. Only he could smile at leaving his captain to die a second time. Only he could keep smiling after Shepard...

Shepard.

The name almost slipped past Tali's lips, closing her eyes as she entered the torn-open shaft of the Normandy's airlock. They were so close. Her words to him before the assault still rang in her ears, only now understanding their terrible prophetic nature. If only she had more time. Shuddering again as she crossed the fractured space of the Combat Information Center, the holographic display of the damaged sections of the Normandy flickering in and out of focus around loosely-hanging wiring, the quarian crossed through the halls towards the quantum entanglement communicator. The desperate dash to reach the conduit on Earth had been cut short by the towering figure of Harbinger, the supposed leader of the Reaper forces. Sliding to a stop in the blackened dirt and mud, Shepard had turned his face towards her, shouting something at the very last moment before the crimson beam had gouged through the earth and sent a rolling Mako flipping over and nearly crushing her beneath its weight if she hadn't moved in time. The scar in her suit now patched from the blast stood out as a dull gray line in the black mesh, remembering clearly the blood leaking from her open wound and painting her form even as Shepard hoisted her onto Garrus' shoulder. What came next would haunt the quarian until her dying days.

_"You've got to get out of here."_

_ The staccato beat of gunfire._

_ "I can't stay behind..."_

_ The horrible roar of the Reaper._

_ "Don't argue with me, Tali."_

_ Screams of horror and pain all around._

_"D-Don't leave m-me behind..."_

_ Silence._

_ "I need you to make it out of here alive, Tali... Get back to Rannoch... Build yourself a home..."_

_ The beating of her heart._

_ "I h-have a h-home... Come back to me..."_

_ The humming bass of the Normandy's engines._

It was all a blur after that. Against his own will, Joker had brought the Normandy into the Arcturus Relay and they crashed here. Wherever 'here' was.

Observing the thorough damage done to the delicate communication system of the QEC, Tali took a slow inhale, the sound warbling softly through the voice modulator of her helmet, before cracking her knuckles and bending down to undo the access panel at the base of the semi-circular console. Igniting her omnitool and displaying multiple haptic windows running diagnostics on the damaged systems, the quarian set herself to work once more. The ship hadn't been as damaged as she'd feared. The strange pulse of crimson energy that had seemingly completely deleted EDI and left her construct body and core empty had, at first, deactivated nearly the entire starship's systems. But it seemed the AI had hand-designed built protocols into the Normandy's core mainframe in the event of its- her... death... a simple manual restart reactivating all the essential systems. The work would go quickly, thanks to EDI's departing act to save them all. She hadn't been the only one to have lost something in the final, desperate bid for survival. But it would go quicker with help. It seemed she was the only one interested in fixing the Normandy, Joker and Garrus and the rest of the crew heading down to the shore supposedly to get a lay of the land. Tali snorted. Unlikely. Ignoring the bitter, unfair thought crossing her mind and the twinge of guilt at knowing what happened was nobody's fault, Tali seared a frayed wire together, testing the conductivity with a nod.

Tali had gotten used to working alone since her time on the first Normandy. The quiet would keep her awake for hours, time best spent working on the drive core or maintaining the engines. Her mind would usually wander in the minutia of her work, usually to the many other micromanaged tasks she attended to or the daunting mathematic formulae she had been doing automatically in her mind since she had first picked up a starship part. Often, however, her mind strayed to Shepard. The thought of him, for the longest time, kept her sane in the dangerous and often suicidal adventures they went on. Adventures she wouldn't trade anything for. But now... Now she only felt pain. One three-fingered hand brushed the suit pocket where she kept the small, brown-red stone Shepard had plucked from the ground on Rannoch, letting her carry home wherever they went. The ocean beating against the cliffs, the view from their future living room window, the words they shared as he lept from the turret and faced the towering Reaper, it was all perfectly, crystalline clear in her mind. And it all hurt so much to remember.

But she couldn't think about that right now, reaching her omnitool forward and scorching another fragmented wire and sealing a small breach with a dab of omnigel. He was alive. She knew it. Somewhere in her heart she knew the man she loved was still alive and she'd find him again. If she had to pull this entire ship apart and build a whole new one, she would. And they'd build their home together; a place where they could be together away from the galaxy after fighting as hard as they had to save it. And she'd start with the living room window, the measurements running through her head as she worked to repair the damaged QEC and a single tear pattered against the glass of her visor.

And somewhere far away, in the midst of smoking rubble and blowing dust, a man in pitted and scarred black armor, his N7 tags hanging loosely around his neck, took a breath.


	2. Chapter 2

Shepard's lungs burned with a white-hot fire as his cracked and split lips parted in a long, ragged inhale, stale and dust-tinged air flooding his esophagus as the physical sensation of his heart beating battered against the bone and steel cage of his ribs. He couldn't see, but he felt stinging gravel bite into his irises. His dried tongue tasted blood, staining his teeth an ugly brown. Everything hurt. Every molecule and fiber of his body sprawled over the smoking rubble piled around him screamed in agony. His limbs felt like lead weights, his muscles and cybernetic joints and synapses straining to move even a single inch as his mind caught up with the fact that he was still alive.

Panic and shock dawned on his mind at the realization, his body seizing up seemingly of its own accord, coughing mouthfuls of dirt and spasming wildly between intense sensations of blind disorientation and vertigo. Pain lanced through his skull like a needle of fire, threatening to burst through his forehead and escape. The reflexive lifetime of military training and combat experience cut through the surge of panic wracking his already-battered form, cold and calm as he sought something, anything to focus on to keep his heart from stopping again.

In Shepard's mind, he felt himself picturing silver, almond-shaped eyes, like pools of molten starlight. Long, flowing locks of hair so pitch black it spilled over pale, striped shoulders like a waterfall of ink. Moist lips, soft like folds of pure silk, spreading in a radiant smile that forced his heart to skip a beat. Bared curves of svelte, rolling, exotic, alien skin, moving against him and washing over his own like the beaches of heaven. For a brief, almost fleeting second, he could even feel the simple, raw pressure of her arms wrapped around him, smell the scent of engine oil and leather clinging to her suit and the distant scent of musky honey and cinnamon beneath as their hands unfastened the seals together.

Shepard's tongue croaked weakly as he attempted to speak Tali's name, even a whisper scratching his throat raw. His heartbeat had finally managed to slow, the fiery pain in his chest disappating as a whole new flood of sensations took over. With a heavy weight that nearly forced another groan from the human's lips, a monstrous hunger and thirst settled itself in Shepard's stomach, seemingly robbing him entirely of whatever energy he had shown in his awakening and with it came an exhaustion the soldier had never experienced before; save when he had felt himself draining of life over Alchera.

How long had he laid here? Wherever here was. His arms and legs wouldn't move, no matter how much he tried to focus on the necessary muscle movements. His eyes were open, the sensation of sofly-billowing wind brushing dust and dirt into them not lost, but he could only see soft blobs of muted gray and black. The slow realization of what was happening dawned on him as he managed to let the heavy lids of his eyes roll shut. His cybernetics weren't working, but somehow he lived. Shepard's mind wracked for answers even as he focused what little effort he could into twitching his fingers and toes.

The last thing he could remember... The Catalyst. The spectral artificial intelligence that claimed to have created the Reapers. The Crucible. The final weapon constructed to win the war against extinction. It worked. The Catalyst had warned that Shepard himself had been part machine, the proximity to the destructive crimson wave of energy released by the colossal device damaging his cybernetics. Silence settled over the ruins the Commander's beaten body rested in, a dry, rasping sound leaving his throat and passing as laughter. It worked. The war was over. The Reapers were gone. Tali was safe.

Tali. Her name brought back a tidal wave of memory and emotion, something to grip onto and wade back to the shores of full consciousness. Her words still rang in his ears, remembering the heartbreaking crack in her voice as she called him back to her. Shepard's muscles surged upward with a grueling exercise of will, gritting his teeth as his broken form flopped bonelessly in the rubble, a particularly jagged section of rock digging into his back. For the first time in the Commander's memory, his body was too weak to continue, exhaustion, thirst, and hunger making the simple act of staying awake more painful than it had ever been to even attempt to rise. Would he die here? Could this all just be the last few moments of a dying man? Would he ever see Tali again...?

A limp hand brushed a small chunk of broken stone, small enough to fit into his palm. With a titanic effort, Shepard's fingers closed around the stone, the tactile sensation on his bare skin, the armor having stripped away beneath his shoulder, brought back a strong, vivid memory. Standing on the mesa overlooking the sea on Rannoch, rust-red sand and stone dotted with desert brush and wild flowers. Watching as Tali's three-fingered hands framed the horizon, measuring the placement of the living room window. Plucking a small red stone from the ground and holding it between each other's hands, their eyes meeting. A piece of home.

Home.

_Come back to me._

He was going home. With a snarl, Shepard pressed against the numb, heavy feeling pervading his muscles with his will sharpened into a clear point; get up. A thousand voices and images played in his head as his legs shifted, displacing his weight from his back. The long-lost faces of his parents on Mindoir. The stern commands of his drill instructors and commanders past. The thousands of people, men, women, and children who had spoken to him, sent him messages, all urging him on in the fight against the Reapers. Admiral Anderson, saluting Shepard in his dress blues. His crew, all of their names and faces and voices, all urging him onward. But loudest of all was Tali's voice, calling him home.

Nearly roaring at the sheer agony of his movement, Shepard rose onto unsteady feet, one foot slipping only for his bare hand to shoot forward and make contact blindly against a tall steel strut for support. Hollowing booming sounds of collapsing rubble and crumbling structures sounded in the distance, but he heard nothing else. His eyes couldn't see, but his legs worked well enough. Bent into a painful limp and hobbling slowly forward, the cold air billowing dust in a howling wind all around him, Shepard picked a direction and put one foot in front of the other.


End file.
